apocalypsos | Hey, look, I found something to write meta about!

Cutting because this is going to get very, VERY long-winded. I can sum this up thusly:

Not all reality TV is bad. No, really.

For the longest time I did a lot of bitching about how all reality TV sucks. It's kind of the usual setting for most people. A lot of people are loathe to admit that they watch any reality television, because of course all reality television is exploitative, bad, tasteless and fake. No, seriously, all of it. And God forbid you admit you actually like a reality TV program, because someone will be sure to tell you something along the lines of reality television being a festering cesspool of suck.

Reality television hatred is the source of one of my most annoying pet peeves, which is when someone's response to me saying I like, say, Project Runway is to tell me that reality TV is manipulated for entertainment purposes. Yes, and the ship sinks at the end of Titanic, and Jared and Jensen aren't actually fucking no matter how much RPS I write about them.

Guess what? I KNOW.

You did notice that "for entertainment purposes" part, right? That's the part I focus on when I'm watching Project Runway or America's Got Talent. My addiction to reality television leans towards the cheesy talent competition angle. I like watching people use their talent, skills and training to win a prize. It's the perfect portion of reality television to point to when you want to knock reality television for producer manipulation. And you know what?

I don't care.

I used the list of reality shows off Wikipedia to see just how much of it I either watch or have watched.

Reality shows I love and watch obsessively:

The Amazing Race
Project Runway
America's Got Talent
Top Chef
Shear Genius
Top Design (I want to say that if they did another season I wouldn't watch, and yet. *sigh*)
Flipping Out (I don't even know.)

Reality shows I watch casually (as in, I won't drop everything to watch them but I have left them on just because there's nothing else on and they're not bad):

Airline
Miami Ink
Celebrity Fit Club
Wife Swap
Trading Spouses
Gene Simmons Family Jewels
Deal or No Deal (God help me, but ... but ... it's on right before Heroes! *sobs*)

Reality shows I formerly watched (in which I've watched or followed at least part of a season):

Road Rules
The Real World
Rescue 911
Extreme Makeover: Home Edition
Monster House
Queer Eye For The Straight Guy
Changing Rooms/Trading Spaces
The Osbournes
Big Brother (just the first season)
Survivor

The thing about admitting you like reality television is that a lot of people immediately jump down your throat as if you just admitted you kick babies and eat puppies without seeming to comprehend that you can slap the reality TV moniker on a LOT of shit. I've seen pretty much everything that doesn't freely admit it uses actors and scripts labeled as reality television, which is kind of the point. I mean, if you really want to argue it, wrestling can and has been labeled as reality television when I think everybody in their right mind knows how much of it isn't reality. That's the whole thing -- you're supposed to play along, damn it.

I think this is me coming off the whole Kid Nation scandal where I've already seen some reaction to it that's very, "See? Reality TV is bad! Kill it, kill it! *stomp, stomp*" Are you fucking kidding me? Are you serious? Dude, read that article, or ANY article on that situation, and tell me that that's not just a bad idea, period. Let me put it this way -- if a producer comes up to you and says, "Sign over your children so they can be left alone in a deserted town with a bunch of other children and questionable diet and health care," YOU SAY NO. No, wait, I'm sorry, YOU SAY, FUCK YOU KINDLY WITH A JACKHAMMER. That's not a bad reality show, that's a bad TV show, wrapped up in a bad idea dipped in glazed stupidity sauce and swimming in sweet asshat gravy, and it doesn't make every other reality show evil incarnate by association.

It's like with Cliff assaulting Marcel last year on Top Chef -- just because that entire season was peopled with dicksmacks doesn't mean they should cancel the entire show and shut down Bravo's reality television department. It just means they should get better at not signing up dicksmacks as contestants. I mean, really, what else would they show without their reality TV reruns, right? ;)

When reality television is done well it's on par with scripted television with actors. Project Runway is a prime example of a great reality show -- it's well-edited, it's got a decent host in Heidi Klum (who's certainly gotten better at it over the run of the show) and a fabulous personality in Tim Gunn, it's got a prize that aims to nudge a designer's career forward (granted, it's not going to turn them into a Versace, but still), and it shows you the artistic process at work. It's got fabulous execution for a competitive reality show ... hell, for any television show. Even when it's awful, it's still pretty good.

I don't know. There's like this secret shame about saying you like reality TV, like you're supposed to be embarrassed if you say you like a reality TV show and add, "Oh, but that's the exception to the rule!" You know what? Fuck the exception to the rule. There's not just ONE good reality TV show and oh, all the rest are bad.

It's like with romance novels. I love them. I own bunches. I used to own more but I've given them to the local library and I could swear I lost a bunch of them in the move back to Pennsylvania. I was at work last night and talking to a buddy of mine (the one I went to the Mutter Museum with) and he made a comment about how cheesy and stupid romance novels are. I said, "I love romance novels," to which he added, "Oh, I meant just those trashy Harlequin novels where they put out eight different titles a month and they all suck." So I said, "You know what? I even like those." Are they bad and cheesy and cheap? Yeah, but they're also fun and stupid and awful sometimes in the best ways, and sometimes you really luck out and they're actually better than they should be.

Is reality TV exploitative? Oh, I'm not going to argue that. But I realized a little while ago that my embarrassment squick isn't as bad as I thought it was. (God knows I'd never be able to watch The Office otherwise.) My dangerousness squick, on the other hand, is HUGE. I had no problem whatsoever watching idiots embarrass the hell out of themselves at the America's Got Talent auditions, but Ivan the Urban Action Figure crashes into the stage and I can not watch. I still haven't seen the whole thing. I've seen him standing there on the side of the stage poised to jump over the line of chairs, and I've seen him lying facedown on the stage with stagehands all around him. And I've never seen anything on reality TV that I find half as embarrassing as those people behind news reporters or pretty much anybody holding a camera who hold up a sign or wave at a camera yelling, "HI, MOM!" Strangely enough, I can handle it just fine if you sign up to be an idiot on national TV -- more power to you, dude -- but you have five seconds of airtime and THIS is what you say? *headdesk*

The thing about reality TV is that no, I don't believe that is what those people are really like in real life. When I hear contestants complaining because editing made them into the villain, I understand. What I also understand is that this is the source material that you gave them to edit with. And as much as there are reality-show contestants that I loathe, I'm glad they went on national television and behaved like that. It makes it easier for me to know to avoid them in real life. You think I'm ever going to eat at a restaurant Ilan works at, if he ever bothers to stop skeeving his way through his fleeting celebrity to start one? God, no. I'd rather go back out to the sidewalk and order a hot dog from the nice guy with the oozing sore on his lip. (This also ties back to another reality-show pet peeve of mine which is when contestants say, "I'm here to compete, I'm not here to make friends." Which ninety-nine percent of the time is reality-show-speak for, "Instead of being friendly with everyone so that I can compete with a clear head, I'm going to start shit with everyone who crosses my path so that I spend the entire competition either pissed off or pissing people off.")

I really don't want to have to argue the validity of reality television as a source of entertainment, but if you say it like that -- "I like reality television" -- a lot of people's assessment of your intelligence drops, even if they watch American Idol or tune in every week for Extreme Makeover: Home Edition or never miss an episode of Dancing With The Stars. And I really hate the implication that reality television is some new and awful genre of television that's only popped up recently. Game shows, talk shows, docudramas, variety shows -- that's all reality TV in some form or another, and it's been around since the early days of television programming.

You say reality TV and people immediately think you're talking about Joe Millionaire or Flavor of Love or whatever lowest-common-denominator show is popular enough. Seriously, there's a lowest-common-denominator handful of shows in EVERY genre. The existence of Age of Love or Cheaters does not invalidate the fact that shows like American Idol, Project Runway and The Apprentice are great entertainment.

Pretty much everybody who watches TV inevitably watches something that counts as reality TV. Sometimes they even enjoy it. So knocking an entire genre just because of a few bad apples is just wrong, dude.

And for sitting through all of that, here's that clip of Paul Potts singing opera. (Hey, I consider it a present, damn it. :))

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I dislike reality television because I think it's nearing the line of lowest common denominator that spells the stagnancy of any sort of American civilization. It's the Wal-Mart of television -- cheaply produced knockoffs of a craft that used to take at least a little talent and training to do, the ultimate moronic destination of all those preposterously stupid "America's Funniest Videos" clips that were the rage in the 90's. It's producers lining their own wallets now that they don't have to actually pay members of the Screen Actors Guild. It's popularity contests that put jackasses like Sanjaya (who I've never seen, but who I know the name of because reality TV pours over to taint every other form of media known to mankind) on for longer than the thirty seconds it should take to determine that he's a waste of space who should be pumping gas somewhere.

I dislike reality television because it promotes the ascendance of the American Idiot. (http://jblaque.livejournal.com/223221.html) I dislike it because it promotes sitting around living vicariously instead of doing something with one's life.

Also, from an emotional standpoint, it's the genre that Fox cancelled Firefly for. "The Littlest Groom", my ass...

You may enjoy them. I have too many deep-seated negative emotional responses associated with them to ever consider them with anything more than bemused disdain. *shrug*

fox1013 said elsewhere in this thread, you can't judge reality television by the standards of scripted television anymore than you can judge scripted TV by reality TV's standards. So knocking it because it's cheap to produce and hires people off the street who don't know how to act is giving the genre shit for things it doesn't require. It's like knocking on scripted television because the cameras don't follow the actors off set and expect them to say funny things off the cuff or perform little games and competitions for prizes.

It's popularity contests that put jackasses like Sanjaya (who I've never seen, but who I know the name of because reality TV pours over to taint every other form of media known to mankind) on for longer than the thirty seconds it should take to determine that he's a waste of space who should be pumping gas somewhere.

That wasn't real popularity, that was a joke. That was VoteForTheWorst.com proving that being able to vote for the winner means you might not like the winner and they might not even have talent. At which point you laugh at Simon Cowell because, HA. Then there is pointing and mocking.

I dislike reality television because it promotes the ascendance of the American Idiot. I dislike it because it promotes sitting around living vicariously instead of doing something with one's life.

I'm trying to figure out how not to feel vaguely insulted by this comment, and I'm coming up with nothin'.

Also, from an emotional standpoint, it's the genre that Fox cancelled Firefly for. "The Littlest Groom", my ass...

Fox may have cancelled Firefly to put on a reality show but that absolutely does not make all reality TV evil or all reality TV watchers socially inept idiots. A reality show is easy enough to produce and advertise. Even if you're not Fox (which is notoriously run by people who shouldn't be allowed to run a lawn mower, much less a TV network), how exactly do you promote a sci-fi/western TV show created by a man best known for creating a cult horror show that ran on a network barely anybody watched and cast with no-name actors? I can't imagine how to sell Firefly as a concept to a network, no matter how good the writing and acting are. I mean, I love that show to itty bitty pieces but it's WEIRD.

And Fox was a completely wrong fit for it network-wise -- what other network would be dim enough to run it out of order and think it'd just work out okay in the end? -- but it's neither reality TV's nor Fox's fault entirely that Firefly failed, and I can give you an example of why -- Serenity. There was two years between the time the TV show went off the air and the time the movie came out, plenty of time for fans to get the word out, and tempt their friends and family. People got hooked on the DVDs and they shot towards the top of the Amazon DVDs sale list. They gave box sets to their friends, they copied the episodes for family members. The fans sold the ever-loving FUCK out of that show. The movie got great reviews and opened at number two, and after all of that it only made back the forty million dollars it cost to make. For a big-screen action movie that's not good, particularly for one that costs relatively little to make compared to other action movies.

And again, as

fox1013 already said elsewhere, exactly how was Fox supposed to get the money to produce Firefly? Cheap-to-produce reality TV shows bring in the money that TV executives can put towards their more expensive, better-quality ventures like, say, a critically acclaimed sci-fi western with low ratings and a cult following.

First, I want to apologize to you for my comments about the ascendance of the American Idiot. It wasn't my intention to insult you, regardless of how much animosity I might feel towards the reality TV trend.

A lot of that, I suspect, stems from an annoyingly lazy roommate I had in college who was too busy watching reality TV and getting drunk or stoned to actually do the schoolwork. That might not have mattered so much to me, except by his proximity he made it nearly impossible for me to study or work on other things in the dorm room. I may have been a lousy student then (due largely to a procrastinate-y nature), but that made it substantially worse.

He flunked out eventually.

But the point is, I prize efficiency, competence, and doing whatevr it is you do to the best of your ability. The majority of reality shows I've been exposed to don't promote that --
they've promoted idiots hoping they look cool being idiots, hardbodied model-esque doing preposterous things to "survive", or something equally ridiculous.

The few that aren't... well, I'm a guy who shaves his head on a regular basis and works as a distribution coordinator for a biomedical company. I can at least respect the ability of professional stylists, but I can't for the life of me figure out why watching an elimination "reality" show based on their exploits appeals.

Fox may have cancelled Firefly to put on a reality show but that absolutely does not make all reality TV evil or all reality TV watchers socially inept idiots. A reality show is easy enough to produce and advertise. Even if you're not Fox (which is notoriously run by people who shouldn't be allowed to run a lawn mower, much less a TV network), how exactly do you promote a sci-fi/western TV show created by a man best known for creating a cult horror show that ran on a network barely anybody watched and cast with no-name actors? I can't imagine how to sell Firefly as a concept to a network, no matter how good the writing and acting are. I mean, I love that show to itty bitty pieces but it's WEIRD.

So are a lot of shows. That doesn't stop them from working or being advertised well. In my opinion, the show got approved and then Fox did everything they could to sabotage it: don't show the actual pilot, advertise it badly (first time I heard a radio ad for it, I thought it was a comedy), put it in the Friday night slot o' doom, upstage or interrupt it with other programs, and finally show the pilot three months after the premiere only to immediately cancel it thereafter. It's like one producer gave it the greenlight and then did something to piss off other people in the Fox organization, who then hamstrung the show and replaced it with crap.

I see you've made many of the same points I have about Firefly and Serenity, but... I dunno, I just can't see the wrong in smart, intelligent movies or shows. The observation that people didn't "get it" says more about the state of American civilization looking for the cheap easy laugh or the hour-plus of I-don't-want-to-use-my-brain than anything else. And that level of slackerness, on a cultural level, pisses me off.

*siiiiiigh* I could rant for a while, but I won't. But just for a personal example: I watch Heroes, Doctor Who, Burn Notice, Eureka, Supernatural, Dexter, Traveller, the new Battlestar Galactica (well, OK, I used to) or other somewhat intelligently written shows. Most of the other stuff on TV? I'd rather just pop in a DVD, or hit the off-switch and go find a book or read some good fanfiction -- like, for example, yours. ; )

Hey, look, I found something to write meta about!

no subject

no subject

no subject